The present invention relates to a facsimile communication system and, more particularly, to a facsimile transceiver which is capable of serving to store and relay data on demand as well as communicating data in an ordinary manner.
Some modern facsimile transceivers are furnished with an on-demand type function of temporarily storing data communicated thereto from a remote facsimile station and relaying the data to another remote facsimile station which is designated by the first station.
The current situation in the art of facsimile transceivers of the type described is that the relaying or intermediate transceiver unconditionally relays data on demand regardless of a station which has requested the intermediate station to relay data (referred to as addresser's station hereinafter) or a station which is to receive the relayed data from the intermediate station (referred to as addressee's station hereinafter). This, however, may lead to offensive use of such transceivers. If, for example, company X in city A transmits desired data to company Y in city B having the data relayed by company Z in the same city A without permission of the company Z, the company Z would be incidiously charged for the long distance call between the cities A and B while the company X would be charged only for the short distance call within the same city. Moreover, when the addresser's station specifies a time for the delivery of the data from the intermediate station to the addressee or when the addressee is busy, the intermediate station or company Z is obliged to hold the data without any reason for the resulting prolonged period of time. This, due to the limited capacity of a storage, would affect the relaying service among a set of transceivers in a group to which the transceiver at the company Z belongs, as well as other services which share the same storage.